In February, Google made an announcement:

That last item we posted was quite skeptical of the government’s National Broadband Plan. Still, the site at Broadband.gov does provide a tool to test your Internet connection speed, which is pretty cool…

On Cafe Hayek, George Mason economics professor Russ Roberts dissects from a libertarian’s point of view a CNN story about the government’s recently announced National Broadband Plan. The initiative is aimed at providing every American “affordable access to robust broadband service,” among other goals.

Says it all

Here’s an amazing story from CNN because it’s so ordinary. It’s about a top-down government initiative that sounds good – giving more broadband access to Americans. Who’s against more Americans getting broadband? The FCC has a plan to get it done. Go Broadband!

So here’s the story.

From the Kaiser Family Foundation site, the Health Reform Subsidy Calculator, which figures out health insurance premiums and government subsidies toward paying them for purchasers of individual insurance under the House, Senate, and Obama compromise plans. Not applicable to those who already receive coverage through an employer.

Of all the dysfunctional state governments, California’s may be at the top. California has a $20 billion budget deficit, but the state cannot raise taxes or pass a budget without a 2/3 majority vote in the state legislature. That law was enshrined in the state constitution in 1978 through Proposition 13, which also capped property [...]

It was only a matter of time, I guess. This Saturday, dozens of “coffee parties” took place around the country. The Coffee Party was formed in response to the seemingly omnipresent and highly vocal Tea Party movement, which seeks a more limited form of government, to say the least. While Coffee Partiers also have a [...]

Some of you have no doubt seen the “Fear the Boom and Bust” video featuring the rap stylings of economists John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich von Hayek, two economists with diametrically opposed viewpoints. To put the dispute in its most simplistic terms, Keynes thought government intervention was the only way out of economic downturns, and Hayek…not so much. (Think Paul Krugman vs. Ron Paul to get a picture of two contemporary acolytes of these schools of thought.)

In Wikipedia’s entry on Keynes, the section “Economics: out of favour 1979–2007” is followed by Economics: the Keynesian resurgence of 2008–2009.

On Sunday, former Republican House Majority Leader Tom Delay defended Sen. Jim Bunning’s recent blocking of an unemployment benefits extension.

From the The Huffington Post:

Some reaction from various sites:

From Hullabaloo

I would guess that this is going to catch on among the dittoheads. The right is reasoning that they can appeal to a good number of the majority who are employed and make them question why they should subsidize all those losers who are not. It worked with health care. Empathy for your fellow man, or even a selfish sense that you might personally need some assistance someday, is being attacked by the right wing head on. And I would guess that there are more than a few people who secretly have thought these things but didn’t have the social support necessary to say it out loud. Now they do.

This isn’t a widely accepted point of view. Yet. But its infecting the body politic.

From a recent post titled “What Are These Three Numbers” on the economics blog Econbrowser comes this chart:

These numbers, represented in billions of 2010 dollars, were taken from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

As we posted earlier, a certain amount of grudging and jealous admiration is held by some Democrats for Republican Senator Jim Bunning, who is standing on principle by single-handedly blocking an extension of unemployment and COBRA benefits. However, if you are one of the couple of hundred thousand who is being immediately denied these funds, [...]